Field test and review – Rainshadow jacket
There’s no such thing as poor weather, just poor gear and poor preparation, and I’ve found that to be true more times than I can count. I’ve had some of my best hikes in weather most people would turn back from, and some of my worst experiences in weather that shouldn’t have been a problem at all, simply because I didn’t have the right gear, or I had the right gear and hadn’t looked after it properly. My $800 GORE-TEX jacket taught me that lesson the hard way, I didn’t realise I had to keep reproofing it to keep it sealed. You only make that mistake once.
Whatever weather you’re expecting, a gentle shower or a full downpour, I’d still carry a rain jacket in the pack regardless, it doubles as a wind breaker to keep you warm even when it never actually rains.
Waterproof jackets, or outer shells, are the final protective layer in your layering system, providing the windproof and waterproof barrier between you and everything from a mild drizzle to gusting wind and an epic downpour.
The main thing that separates one outer shell from another is the fabric it’s made from, and specifically the balance that fabric strikes between breathability and protection. That balance matters because it’s tied directly to what you’re actually doing: high aerobic activities like mountain climbing and steep-hill hiking need a highly breathable fabric, while less arduous activities, day to day use or gently undulating hikes, can get away with something less breathable.
Over the years I’ve carried every kind of jacket in my pack for exactly this reason. I’ve used the old-style hard shell plastic rain jackets, the ones that make you sweat so much you end up wetter inside the jacket than the weather outside it, water-resistant insulated shells, hybrid shells, soft shells, and the more modern hard shells built around GORE-TEX, which manage noticeably more breathability than what came before them.
No jacket manages to be completely waterproof and completely breathable at the same time. A garment that’s fully waterproof is essentially a plastic bag, and you can’t wear a plastic bag without your own sweat condensing on the inside of it. Membranes and coatings exist to find a workable balance, keeping rain out while still letting water vapour, your own perspiration, pass through, but the trade-off is real: the more you have of one, the less you have of the other.
The differences explained
A jacket earns the label ‘waterproof’ when it can keep out driving rain. Brands don’t all test to the same standard, but anything a major brand calls waterproof should stand up to a serious squall. The three broad categories are:
- Waterproof/breathable: keeps rain off your skin while moving perspiration back out through the fabric. If your activity gets your limbs and lungs pumping, this is the category you need, because both the rain coming in and the sweat you’re generating can leave you soaked otherwise.
- Water-resistant: also breathable, and fine for light rain over a short period, think windbreakers and featherweight jackets, but it won’t hold up if the rain settles in or starts coming at you sideways.
- Waterproof/nonbreathable: think emergency poncho. It’ll keep rain off you while you’re sitting or standing still, and it costs very little, some styles will even cover your pack. But exert yourself in one and you’ll be wet inside from your own sweat, and it won’t take much wind to make it largely useless anyway.
With all the gear I’ve field-tested over the years, I thought I’d seen most of what fabric innovation had to offer. Then I received a press release from Patagonia announcing their upcoming winter 2019 Recycled Rainwear Collection, built around the use of recycled materials. That idea itself isn’t new, only six months earlier I’d had a press release about a range of clothing made from recycled plastic bottles, but this collection took it further.
Patagonia’s Recycled Rainwear Collection spans 3 different shells, from entry level to highly technical, and the range is made from Econyl nylon yarns recovered from discarded fishing nets, GORE-TEX Paclite Plus, Eco Circle polyester, and 100% recycled nylon face fabric. Discarded fishing nets, specifically. Fishing nets account for 46 Percent of ALL ocean plastic, and most of the remainder is other discarded fishing gear. World Animal Protection (WAP) reports that 700,000 tons of gear are lost and pollute oceans each year, and the plastics that make up most of the nets already in the ocean take around 600 years to break apart. Turning that material into rainwear is a genuinely worthwhile use of it.
I was sent a Patagonia Men’s Stretch Rainshadow Jacket to field-test and review, here’s what I found.
The Rainshadow is a lightweight waterproof rain jacket made from a 100% recycled face fabric, with the essential features you’d want to keep moving once the weather turns. Weighing close to 300 grams (Men’s Large), it’s light, stretchy, and packs down small, with the features you’d expect from an outer shell in today’s gear-rich market.
The hood is alpine helmet-compatible, which matters in winter if you’re scaling a summit with an ice-axe in hand, and the laminated visor does a good job keeping rain off your face. It stows with a simplified cord-and-hook design and a single-pull adjustment. I’m used to jackets with dual-pull adjustment on either side of the hood, so it took me a few minutes to work out that the single pull was located at the back of my head, and I actually had to take the jacket off the first time to figure out how to tighten it properly. Once I knew, it was straightforward from there.
The front zipper is a coated, watertight design, and there are welted venting pit zips under the arms to regulate temperature. Those vents matter more than they might sound, they let body heat escape from an area where it builds up quickly, which cuts down on perspiration inside the jacket generally. Every zipper is treated with a DWR finish to help keep rain out, and the front zipper has a fold-over rain flap that can be pulled up over your chin in blowing rain or cold wind.
There are two exterior hand-warmer pockets and one welted exterior left-chest pocket, all large enough for electronic devices, gloves, or a beanie. With a pack on, the zippers are still large enough to get into the pockets even with a hip belt across them, which is a detail that’s easy to overlook until you need it. The chest pocket has a DWR-treated zipper, while the hand-warmer pockets use coated, watertight zippers. When you’re not wearing it, the jacket stuffs into its own chest pocket and exposes a carabiner clip-in loop, and with or without the stuff-sack, it packs down small enough to almost fit in the palm of your hand. That’s really the point, it’s small enough that there’s no excuse not to carry it on every hike.
The self-fabric hook-and-loop cuff closures have tabs large enough to grasp with gloves on, so you can adjust them for protection or ventilation without taking your gloves off, and the hem has a dual-adjust drawcord to seal things out further.
I’ve worn this jacket through everything from freezing, sub-zero wind to heavy thunderstorms, and it’s done a good job keeping the elements from reaching my mid layers. Rain beads and rolls off the surface rather than soaking in and chilling you, and a quick shake once the sun’s out leaves it feeling dry again fairly quickly. The 2.5-layer waterproof/breathable membrane means you don’t have to worry about the jacket wetting out, which is the most common failure point for waterproof-breathable rain jackets generally.
The breathability means it doesn’t hold onto heat when you’re active, or trap cold when you’re not, and being able to regulate temperature with the pit vents and the adjustable hem and cuffs made a real difference. I generally start to perspire once the temperature hits 20 degrees or higher, rain or no rain, and there’s nothing worse than ending up wetter inside your jacket from your own sweat than you would have been from the weather outside it.
As with all my reviews, I’ve worn this jacket on at least four day-hikes before writing this up, which isn’t long enough to say much about durability yet. It’s made from 100% recycled nylon stretch ripstop, and I’d like to think that holds up to the Australian bush, but I genuinely don’t know yet. I’ll update this review in a few months if durability turns out to be an issue.
If you want a light, stretchy, packable, environmentally conscious outer shell, the Rainshadow is worth a look. It’s found a permanent home in my pack.
Buy direct from Patagonia for $279.95
(Patagonia Men’s Stretch Rainshadow Jacket)
Tech Specs
- H2No® Performance Standard shell: 2.5-layer, 2.2-oz 30-denier ECONYL® 100% recycled nylon stretch ripstop with a waterproof/breathable barrier and a DWR (durable water repellent) finish
